Ramblings from Jan to Present

I’m feeling compelled to write, but this feeling to write isn’t so much to get things out and to express my feelings. I think it’s more about capturing significant things that are happening in my life right now. I don’t want the end of the year to come around and for me to forget about all of the amazing and not-so-amazing things that have, and will, happen this year.

Jan 10-12 I flew into Denver to meet up with Ramon for a dance event (DFX). The event was quite strange in that these dancers are quite the outgoing and touchy-feely types. I think Ray and I felt a bit out of sorts there, but I really enjoyed the practica and the open dancing we did one night. We played scrabble and watched the worst movie ever (“Sharknado”) because we were thoroughly bored one evening. The day I left we had a big fight. I can’t remember what caused it. I remember holding some resentment because when I initially arrived, I had taken a really early flight and I had asked him to leave a key at the hotel front desk so that I could just check myself into the room (he had mentioned going to the gym and was not sure he’d be around to greet me). He replied saying he was at the gym and couldn’t get off the treadmill to leave a key at the front desk. WTH? This really pissed me off because he knew I was arriving, so 1) he could plan his time around my arrival and 2) how difficult was it to just leave a key for me? Then, for the duration of the stay, he slept a lot and just was overall a slug. I wasn’t sure what to make of that, except that he had flown into Denver after having been in Bali the two weeks prior, and that he just seemed down. Anyway… the argument ended with me being upset and crying and we had a conversation about it. Of course, it ended up with him just talking about how upset he was about the MBA program. So much for him caring about how upset I was.

In February I went to a speed dating event where I ended up with a few mutual yes’. I did meet up with one for coffee, although I knew that one would not go beyond mutual banter we exchanged at the event. Coffee was nice, but it only reaffirmed that the long-term prospect was not a match. One guy was gunho over email, but then that fizzled out and no real life meeting ever happened. And the last guy never initiated contact, so that was that. The overall experience was good, and I may try it again sometime. I am not sure.

Also in February, I had come down with the strangest cold. One evening I felt a tickle in my throat, and just as quickly as I felt it, I completely lost my voice. My voice was gone for at least 3 days, and I had a really bad cough that lasted around 2-3 weeks. It was the most miserable illness I’ve had in a long time. In some ways, it was a good thing that happened to me, because it really caused me to hydrate my body. I was drinking lots of water, juice, water+honey+lemon to try and flush the illness out of my body. It seemed like everyone around me caught this cold too, or some variation of it.

Then in late February I went rock climbing for the first time. My cousin and I tried it out and I really enjoyed it a lot. My feet were killing me afterwards, but I thought it was just due to the tight shoes and all of the pressure on the toes. This was on a Saturday. Brett came out along with his daughter. She’s only 3/4 years old and she really took to me. It had been a long time since I last saw him. A few days later I went dancing and my toe felt a bit sore. I thought it was due to it being stubbed on the dance floor earlier in the week. I went dancing again the next day and the big toe on my right foot felt the same. I was worried I might have sprained it, so I took it easy that night. This was Weds/Thurs. By the time I went to bed on Thursday evening, I noticed my foot had felt pretty sore and stiff. I went to work on Friday and the stiffness was still there. It hurt, but not too badly. I just elevated it and didn’t walk on it very much. But on Friday evening and Saturday evening, my foot swelled up and i was in some pain. It wasn’t excrutiating, but I couldn’t bend the toe and it puffed up quite a bit. So I made an appointment with a podiatrist and went in to see him on Monday. As it turns out, I have something called Hallux Rigidus. It’s caused by many things, but in my case, it’s due to the genetic structure of my foot. I had a long first metatarsal which is not something you want in a an ‘ideal’ foot structure’. This causes the joint in my big toe to rub against each other. My doctor showed me xrays and my right foot is a lot worse than my left foot. This was a really tough thing for me to wrap my head around because I’ve come to love dancing so much. My doctor said he was surprised that I have not felt pain in my foot before because the condition seemed pretty bad in my right toe, but probably the rock climbing and dancing was just a perfect storm to wake up the condition in my foot. He gave me a soft cast to wear, advised me not to flex the toe for a couple of week, and he prescribed an anti-inflammatory drug. My toe felt better within a few days and I actually danced on it twice this week, I want to dance more, but I’m resting it because I want to dance at the Tucson Tango Festival this week. More on this in a bit.

More recently, Ray has opened up about how nervous and worried he is about not finding a job before his visa expires at the end of the month. He met up with me one evening at the dance studio and he looked really upset. He’s holding so much resentment about the MBA program. I suggested we go play video games and “shoot ’em up” – get some frustration out by shooting things in the video games. Not long after that, I spent a couple of days with him working on his resume and sending him job links at various companies. Since that evening playing video games, we’ve gone a few more times. This week he has sent out a lot of resumes and on Friday he got rejected for 5 jobs he had applied for a big company, whose name starts with “G”. I offered to stick around after work to get coffee/snack or dinner and we ended up meeting for a light dinner and ice cream. He wanted to go shoot dinos so we went to D&B’s again. Afterwards, I dropped him off at home and I went to the city to try and dance tango. I was very nervous about being on my foot again for so long, especially putting strain on my toe again, but I really wanted to dance after a whole week of inactivity. The evening was ‘meh’ but I am happy to say that my toe felt ok after that evening. I’m still being really cautious about using it.

The new about my toe was (and has been) really tough for me to accept and to wrap my head around. On one hand, my doctor said definitely no rock climbing, and probably dancing is out of the question. If only to preserve my toe because surgery or more pain will undoubtedly be in my future. This condition is degenerative. I cried a lot the first couple of days and now that I’ve danced on it and there is no pain, in the back of my mind I’m sad and worried that I could be accelerating this condition each time I dance. I’m angry and upset that life would be so cruel. I finally find something I love to do this past year and this is what I get. God is so strange sometimes.

So, this Saturday I went to the healing room to get prayer over my foot. There was also a part of me that really wants Ray to find a job and I’m pretty sure I went there to ask for prayer for him too, but I went into the prayer room telling myself I would only ask about my foot. Well, to explain the process a bit, the prayer warriors don’t get any information in advance about what I am asking prayer for. They pray over the a blank sheet of paper and take note of whatever God says to them. When I went in, one lady said that as she prayed for me, the Lord gave her this image of someone singing and dancing before the Lord. The man said that as he prayed, and image of a gun came to him. Both things that were said to me were quite personal and amazing. I am still quite the skeptic about these things, but the way the woman talked about it, I felt like God knows how much I love dancing and that the enemy is trying to take this joy from me. I pray so earnestly that my foot be miraculously healed, or that my condition never gives me more problems. The part about the gun… I was surprised because the first thing that came to mind is that shooting things in the context of video games is my thing with Ray. I told the prayer warriors this and then we took some time to pray for Ramon too.

Oh! Prior to this, on Monday/Tuesday I went online to a prayer site and I submitted requests to pray for both my foot and for Ray’s job situation. The next day Ray (after having submitted a ton of resumes), got a call from a recruiter who set up a time to speak with him early next week over the phone. I actually do think the prayer request I submitted online was a God thing. I’m not sure if it this job lead will go anywhere, but if Ray is to stay in the country and get a job in the next couple of weeks, it will definitely have to be a God thing.

Today is my birthday. No need to go there.

This week I head to Tucson for a work conference and, as it just happens to be, the Tucson Tango Festival is also happening. I had bought my milonga-only pass back in November and I was really excited to go. But now that I have my diagnosis, I’ve been extremely cautious about resting it so that I can actually dance at the festival. I’ve got mixed feelings about traveling to Tucson, most of that having to do with bad feelings from my childhood, but for the most part I hope to make some new memories and I hope the festival will be a good experience.